Chapter Text
While carving out the pheasant that would be cooked for dinner, Alistair let his thoughts wander in the direction of Redcliffe. He would return to his childhood home for the first time since his departure for the Chantry ten years earlier. How would he be received at the castle? The Arl would understand the urgency of the situation and would give them his help, he was certain of it. But what was this disease that had struck him and which Ser Donnall (1) had spoken of?
His thoughts were interrupted by a beautiful song. Surprised, he raised his head and saw Leliana sitting on a tree stump, sharpening her blades while singing.
What an incongruous vision was this beautiful young woman with a golden voice, dressed in a coarse man’s armor recovered from the body of a rogue on the outskirts of Lothering, sharpening the weapons with which she sliced her enemies in pieces. At her feet, leaning against the stump, Ymlaïs was looking at her, smiling.
The elf, on the other hand, was simply dressed and her long hair coloured like a setting sun, flowed along her shoulders and in her back. Had it not been for the protruding muscles of her archer’s arms, she seemed so small compared to the human, so fragile.
Her face was relaxed and she smiled at the bard as she listened to her sing. Who would have recognized the steel gaze fierce warrior who was still covered with the blood of her enemies a few hours before? For the first time since their encounter, Alistair saw her not as the mysterious elf with intriguing manners or the intrepid hunter able to shoot a bird in full flight a 100 feet away, no: he had just realized that under the warrior was… a woman.
Without thinking about it, he let his gaze linger on the large almond-shaped eyes, the colour of a spring sky, the light and rosy skin slightly gilded by the sun of this ending summer, the golden brown arabesques that adorned her forehead and her nasal bridge, the finesse of her elf features, and the incredible hair from which the tips of her ears escaped. He realized how beautiful he thought she was. Beautiful as a waking dream.(2)
Obviously, you had to be blind not to see that she was pretty, even in armor and with knotted hair. But at that moment, with her beaming face, without artifice, she radiated a simple and pure and yet exotic beauty that fascinated him. Moreover, she exuded an impression of sweetness that he did not know from her.
She looked up and when she smiled at him for the first time, he felt his heart tightening. Then she gave him a questioning look and he came out of his torpor, realizing that he had been holding the knife in the air without making the slightest movement for a few minutes. Blushing to the ears, he pricked his nose at the pheasant and returned to work where he had left it.
(1) See chapter 3 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/26697046)